‘A Way Out’ Developer says Consoles are Holding Gaming Back

PC gaming has been hot and getting hotter over the last few years. Whether it’s due to the extended lifetime of the previous generation, or the underpowered machines that we got with the PS4 and Xbox One, gamers who are looking for the biggest and best in video games have been shifting more toward PC, though console sales still remain strong overall. Sony and Microsoft are trying to fight against this with the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, but the damage is already done in a lot of ways. According to one of the developers behind the upcoming prison break game “A Way Out”, those early consoles are still holding gaming back, calling the PS4 antiquated.

Most of the work developers put out there is to make them work on consoles.

Speaking with Eurogamer, A Way Out developer’s founder Josef Fares said, “You want the honest truth? This machine (pointing to a PS4) is not so strong as you think. “This is like a five-year-old PC. If consoles were as powerful as PCs are today, you would see all different games. Most of the work developers put out there is to make them work on consoles.”

To those who have been following the situation in the console realm for some time, this won’t come as a huge shock. Consoles have had trouble in the modern era as PC components continue improving at a blistering pace. As consoles are fixed hardware, you can’t incrementally upgrade them like a PC. This makes them a sort of freeze frame of technology for when they launch.

The problem this generation is that the PS4 and Xbox One, though slightly more so the Xbox One, launched already pretty underpowered compared to PCs available at the time. PC graphics have only gotten better since then, demanding more from consoles.

As I said, Sony and Microsoft are fighting back with the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, but game developers can’t and likely shouldn’t make games that can only run on those devices. The market is so much smaller when compared to all PS4 and Xbox One owners, so that is the baseline. The newer consoles can allow for improvements in resolution and framerate, but much more beyond that is not allowed due to the limitations of the base units.